MSI MEG Z690 ACE Gaming Motherboard (E-ATX, 12th Gen Intel Core, LGA 1700 Socket, DDR5, Thunderbolt 4, PCIe 5, Dual 2.5G LAN, M.2 Slots, Wi-Fi 6E)

I recently decided to upgrade my 6 year old pc. I have always gone with ASUS motherboards. Have had no issues with any and they offered solid value. The problem with ASUS for this build was that none of their motherboards is compatible with the Noctura cpu cooler that I was going to use. My current build has a Corsair AIO water cooler for the cpu. But this time around I decided to go back to air cooled. The MSI Meg ACE motherboard is clearly expensive. I didn't think I would spend $600 on a motherboard. But having researched a bunch of competing motherboards it was clear that it offered more higher end features and most of all it was built like a tank. Since it was being paired with an Intel I7-12700k cpu, EVGA RTX 3080 FTW, Corsair DD5 memory, and 3 Samsung 980 pro Nvme ssd's, I decide to splurge and purchase it. I am happy that I did. It is perfect for my needs and everything went off without a hitch. The board is extremely ridged (thick). It has the voltage power to overclock any high end cpu. Nvme slots are solid and have heating thermal pads. It pretty much has all the important features that the $2000 MSI Godlike motherboard has and is a lot less. Not for everyone but if your looking for a solidly built high end motherboard, it can't be beat.

It's not a budget motherboard,it's expensive but I just would not understand people spending so much money on CPU or GPU but gets cheap when it comes to the electronic board where all your expensive components reside and operates.I've been using it for almost a month now with win 11 and never had on issue. Two times I had BSOD but that turned out to be my DDR5 memory which didn't do good with overclocking.Good quality material used all over the board and you can see and feel it.

First off, specs of old PC versus new build:CPU before: 2600k AMDCPU after: I5 13th genRAM Before: 8GBs ofDDR4 at 3000 MHzRam after: 64 GBs Corsair DDR5 at 6600MHzDrive Before: 1X 1TB Samsung 860 EVO M.2 running at 2280 MB/SDrive(s) After: 3x 1TB WD SNF850X M.3 Gen 4 running at 7300 MB/SGPU before and after: RTX 3080 (PNY)MOBO before: B450 Auros Elite, circa 2017MOBO after: This one, silly.Holy heck, what a difference this thing has made for me! I actually replaced everything in my system aside from the GPU. I was running 7 year old components before this upgrade. I'd been able to run anything on ultra, pretty much, but only in 1080p. This new rig has been astonishing. Bear in mind that I am upgrading absolutely everything from my old system aside from the GPU, so my experience is biased in RAM, CPU, MOBO, THE GORGEOUS CASE (banana for scale), and M.2s.I absolutely love this MOBO. Double LAN ports, very fast wifi card otherwise. I have paid for like 10 bajillion MBS/s per femtosecond internet for so long, now. I had never seen close to those advertised speeds but it turns out my devices were what were really holding me back. I thought Steam had a download cap of like 2MB/s, but nope. I've seen DLs go at 30MBs/s. With torrents it's sometimes been faster.I like that everything is black and gold. The pic I attached is my new rig. It still needs 5 more fans and some more pixel vomit. You can't really see any of the gold at all, but still, not having a garish lighted logo screaming "AUROS 15,000,000,000 AORUS AORUS AORUS" in orange and yellow, even when the case is unplugged and buried 27 feet underground, when you want your rig to be, you know, not orange, is really nice. They are notoriously difficult to address. Not this guy. No lights, no problem. If you went with an AIO watercooler instead of that massive cube of aluminum and fans that I have, you could see the gold. The glass on my case is also tinted so it makes a difference. It's a Lian Li Dynamic XL, if you're curious.I should say that I got this board for $250 in q4 2023. Prices seem to fluctuate. Still, cheapest flagship, even if it was the flagship 2 years ago. I can't justify paying $1000 for the best MOBO in all of existence at the current moment.I am confident, after many hours of research and deliberation, that my new rig is fairly future proof, if not in specs then in gameability. Everything runs at well over 60FPS on ultra settings in 4k. AMD Freesync Premium makes a difference, too. Even in VR, it's butter smooth. At least for my headset (old Samsung odyssey), that is.It's sad that I'm now 35 years old, literally middle-aged, and only now have a rig that sits among the greats. I have about 1/3 the interest in videogames as I did as a teen. Wish I could give old me the best while he could appreciate it fully. That's depressing lol so hey just go ahead and use this MOBO and consider upgrading your shtuff lol

This is an awesome board. Very high end, very heavy & sturdy. It barely bends, has metal back plate to make it even more sturdy.Just built a PC with a 12th gen Intel Core i7 12700k, 48gb DDR5 RAM, and a 1tb M.2 NVME drive, it fired right up. Great BIOS.Highly recommend. I got it new for $250, so it was an incredible deal, it had everything it was supposed to come with, and completely new board with the plastic still covering chipset & heatsinks.

This is a great motherboard, is loaded with NVMe storage options. I am running 3 Samsung 980 Pro NVME's in it, all at x4 and a 3080 ti running at x16 and everything is PCIE 4.0, but the first x16 slot can support PCIE 5.0. The only thing I was a little concerned about is that I bought a 'new' motherboard, but when it arrived it was in a weird box, and there was no tape on the motherboard box to seal it, and some of the plastic protection on the motherboard had fingerprints and dirt under it, so it's like it was used but returned, I'm not sure but it works.

It was a great price at a little over 200 dollars. I installed 7200 MHz memory but it was only stable at 6800 MHz. I'm running a 4090 founders edition with a 13900k cpu. I installed the intel be200 wifi 7 card but didn't work with this motherboard so I had to put in a wifi 6E card and that worked fine. I know the wifi 7 card works fine because I installed on another motherboard and it work great, but the wifi 7 card didn't even show up in device manager. Keep in mind the m.2 ssd limitation as the 3rd on is pcie 3.0 and the 4th and 5th m.2 slots are connected to the 3rd pcie slot and one of the sata ports. But it is a very good motherboard with lots of m.2 slots and pcie 5.0 and ddr 5 memory slots. But a lot of the reviews show damage to the motherboard with missing parts and that just didn't happen in my case. Everything looked great and works really well. And at just over 200 dollars it was a steal. I use the thunderbolt display port passthrough and it works great. Well good luck and happy shopping.